In today's world the use of wireless personal area networks (WPANs) has been gaining popularity because of the flexibility and convenience in connectivity they provide. WPAN systems, such as those based on Bluetooth technology, provides wireless connectivity to peripheral devices and/or mobile terminals by providing short distance wireless links that allow connectivity within a specific distance (10-meter range). In contrast to WPAN systems, wireless local area networks (WLANs) provide connectivity to devices that are located within a slightly larger geographical area, such as the area covered by a building or a campus, for example. WLAN systems are typically based on IEEE 802.11 standard specifications, typically operate within a 100-meter range, and are generally utilized to supplement the communication capacity provided by traditional wired local area networks (LANs) installed in the same geographic area as the WLAN system. In some instances, WLAN systems may be operated in conjunction with WPAN systems to provide users with an enhanced overall functionality.
When operating a Bluetooth device (BTD) and a WLAN device in, for example, a wireless device, at two different types of interference effects may occur. One interference effect happens because the Bluetooth devices and WLAN devices transmit on the same or overlapping frequencies.
The second effect occurs if the transceiver of a Bluetooth device is in close proximity to the transceiver of a WLAN device as it is the case in mobile phones or personal digital assistants (PDA). In this instance the transmitter of one device overloads the receiver of the other device and the receiver is not able to receive any signals independent of whether the Bluetooth device and WLAN device use the same frequencies.
The collocation interferences are solved using packet traffic arbitration (PTA) technique. The solution requires physical connections between the BTD and WLAN device as well as software modifications. To accommodate different receive/transmit scenarios, a total of four control signals are set up between the BTD and WLAN device. The control signals include a Bluetooth line (BT line), a wireless local area network line (WL line), a wireless local area network receive indicator line (RXIND line), and a priority line (PRI line). BT line and WL line are basic arbitration signals from BTD and WLAN device respectively. PRI line is a Bluetooth priority indicator for very important traffic.
These control lines between the BTD and WLAN device provide very limited amount of information to efficiently arbitrate the medium access between BTD and WLAN device and also the do not provide information such as connection type and type of link of communication (asynchronous connection-less (ACL) link, synchronous connection oriented (SCO) link or enhanced synchronous connection oriented (eSCO) link). Also BTD or WLAN device do not know the time period for which the other device needs the medium and for what purpose. This lack of knowledge leads to sub-optimal scheduling of the medium access for BTD and WLAN device. The BTD and WLAN device are connected to a host system (main processor or micro controller) and some of the data transfer between the BTD and WLAN device occurs through the host system. In case of time critical data, the data transfer through the host system takes too much time.
Hence, it would be advantageous to provide a method and a system for transferring data between the collocated BTD and WLAN device through the existing control lines between the two devices. The present invention has been developed to meet these needs in the art.